The explanation for how all these employees got to be born on the same day (in different years) and then become Hampton Subway employees is that three years ago, we had a personnel manager named Norman Honish who was a little odd, but otherwise okay or so we thought, and he did all the interviewing and hiring here and what happened was he just felt it would be economical, or perhaps he just thought it would be interesting if everybody he hired for the Subway system were just people who had the same birthday as he did. (Liked the date? Fewer company birthday cake expenses?) ‘

After it was found that he was doing this, he was of course summarily fired, and since then we’ve had this ongoing problem, solved by a big cake in the cafeteria of course just as he might have predicted, but which we expect will slowly fade away as people either leave the company, get fired or die off.

Meanwhile, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you happy birthday to all of you happy birthday to you!

NEW ESCALATORS IN SOUTHAMPTON

Our commissioner Mr. Aspinall has often expressed the opinion that the escalators down to our platforms are too slow—they were built and installed in 1933—and this causes both worry to our customers when they see their train coming in down there and after that personal reckless behavior to catch the train—and it would be best to try to get newer, faster escalators to speed things up.

And so, after a long search, our buying department has come up with a new escalator we have bought, which we will try out beginning next week as a test in our Southampton station to see how the customers like it. It’s made in China by the Wei Chin Otis Elevator Company and it is 33% faster, and it has grips on the handrails and when you get to the bottom, there is a little form you can fill out, if you want, which will be a big help for us to decide whether to get more, and a bin alongside where you can slip them in the slot. If all goes well, the new escalators will be installed on all our platforms. If not, we can always re-install the old one at Southampton, since we are keeping the one taken out in a storage room—the old ones last forever. Thank you.

DELAY REGRET

We regret a 12-minute delay last Saturday in East Hampton when five people with bicycles tried to board the new “bicycle friendly” cars at the same time on that platform and all got stuck and mixed up. The Jaws of Life tool that we have at the ready on the platform wall next to the fire extinguisher had to be used to untangle it all.

SUBWAY

Subway, the restaurant chain, which has the franchise to sell their products in their food concessions on all the platforms, is introducing a new two-foot long HamptonsSubway salami and pimento cheese hero. It is the same as a regular two-foot long salami and pimento cheese hero, except that those frisky Subway chefs have found a way to attach little square “subway windows” icings to the sides of the long hero rolls by using peanut butter guns. There is a $2 premium for these special heroes.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

This Thursday is our “two for one swipe” promotion. All persons using the system can swipe their metro cards once as they go through the turnstile and then after they’ve gone through, reach back and swipe it a second time to give a free pass to the person behind them whether they like it or not.

I’ve never been a big fan of this sort of thing. For me, there’s the price you have to pay and it’s dishonest to either overcharge or give a bargain or something because people will not be clear anymore what the fair price is after awhile.